


Gays & Daleks

by dragonmorph



Category: Guys and Dolls (1955), Guys and Dolls - Loesser/Swerling/Burrows
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots, F/F, female!Sky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-19 01:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22469830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonmorph/pseuds/dragonmorph
Summary: “Nathan,” I said, “Sky Masterson does not enter into an obligation to any man, woman, or cybernaut.”
Relationships: Sarah Brown/Sky Masterson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4
Collections: Summer Solstice Swap





	Gays & Daleks

I.

In looking back on the events in question, it is clear that my first mistake was walking down West Forty-First Street at six p.m.

Now, I would not want you to mistake my meaning. There is no street in Manhattan where I would fear to tread, day or night, be it the shadiest alleyway in the Village or the most trafficked thoroughfare of the cybernauts. No, the problem with West Forty-First Street at six p.m. is that it is both near The Hot Box and near the start time of The Hot Box’s early-evening show, which means there is a very good chance of running into Nathan Detroit.

I knew all this, but I was distracted on this particular Thursday, and I did not realize where I was until I heard Nathan beckoning me from the remains of a nearby building. “Sky!” he called out in a very loud whisper. “Sky Masterson! Just the doll I wanted to see.”

I am quite frequently the doll Nathan Detroit wants to see, which is a very good reason for avoiding him. “Nathan,” I said, crossing over to the bombed-out shell of what had once, several decades ago, been a bodega. “How are you this fine evening?”

“Just peachy, just peachy,” he said, peering nervously out of the ruins. “Say. You don’t happen to be in the market for a small business deal, do you?”

“Not even dinner first?” I cocked my hip against a pile of rubble. “Nathan. What kind of doll do you take me for?”

He made a face. “Adelaide says I am not allowed to take other dolls out to dinner anymore,” he said. “And trust me, you do not want to stand up to Adelaide when she is holding a pair of stiletto heels.”

“I agree with you on that,” I said. Adelaide’s aim with a pair of heels was legendary.

“So how about it?” he said. “A little business deal between friends.”

“I’m always open to a business deal,” I said. “What do you propose?”

“Part ownership in the craps game,” Nathan said. “To the small tune of ten thousand credits.”

I laughed in his face. “Ten thousand credits! Where do you imagine I could find such a quantity of potatoes as that?”

“I know you’ve got the dough,” he said. “Come on, Sky, it’s a great deal. I’ll give you a forty—no, a thirty-five percent share in the game. You can’t do better than that.”

“I can do better by leaving my credits where they are, my friend,” I said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“Wait!” he said. “You gotta hear me out. If you’ll just lend me the money—”

“Nathan,” I said, turning back around. “Sky Masterson does not enter into an obligation to any man, woman, or cybernaut. You of all people should know this.”

“A bet, then,” he said. “Just, please, Sky, you gotta help me out here.”

There was a note of desperation in his voice I had not heard from him before. “This would not have anything to do with the rumors that a certain general from the Mechanization Army has been looking to have words with you.”

His face went pale. “Where did you hear that?” he squeaked. “Er, I mean—no, no, that’s entirely unrelated. That is merely about a friendly business proposition I wish to extend to her, which she no doubt wishes to hear at the soonest possible occasion.”

“A business proposition such as the one you just tried to make me,” I said.

“Sky.” He swept his hat off his head. “You do me wrong. As if I would ever extend a business offer to a mechanized personage that was as good as the business offer I would extend to you, my good personal friend.”

I had reason to doubt the sincerity of his words. However, I also had reason to wish the conversation over quickly. “All right,” I said. “As you are my friend, I will make you this bet.” I reached up and swiped the metal plate, which had appeared to be screwed on, from its spot on the right side of his head. “If you can tell me the color of your locator crystal, the money is yours.”

Nathan swept a panicked glance at the false locator plate in my hand, and then at the end of the block, where I had already seen the telltale metallic sheen of the members of the Mechanization Army gathering for the evening’s demonstration. “Sky. My good friend. You would not wish me to be caught without—”

“Of course not,” I said. “So you had better act on this bet quickly.”

He screwed up his face and looked to be going through every color name he had ever heard, if indeed he had ever heard any, while every few seconds sneaking glances at the tidy geometric rows assembling down the block. “No bet,” he said finally.

I held it out, and he seized it glumly.

“Blue,” he said. “What a crazy color.”

“The best of luck with your ten thousand credits,” I said.

“No, Sky,” he said, darting out and grabbing hold of my sleeve before I could return to the street. “You gotta give me another chance. You don’t know what this would mean to me and Adelaide—”

I am a lady and do not like it when gentlemen grabs hold of my garments. But seeing as Nathan looked a little green around the gills, I did not give him the clocking he so richly deserved. “My friend,” I said. “I appreciate the offer, but I have better uses for ten thousand credits than investing in your craps game. This very evening, I am headed to the Havana, where I plan to make a tidy penny at the blackjack tables—”

“The Havana!” A gleam entered his eye, which I did not entirely like the look of. “On the north side of Bryant Park?”

“This week, yes.” I glanced down the block, where the demonstration would no doubt start very soon. “If you’ll excuse me—”

“You are not going alone?” Nathan said.

“I will be going alone, but I do not anticipate being alone once I get there. A lady like me likes to have a pretty doll or two blow on her cards for her, as you well know.”

“But, going to the Havana alone,” Nathan said. “That is a real high-class joint. Surely you don’t wish to make an entrance without a doll on your arm.”

I was beginning to become annoyed. “I will make my entrance as it pleases me to make my entrance. If I wanted to arrive with a doll on my arm, I would.”

“But surely this late, you would have trouble procuring one,” he said.

“I would merely have to ask,” I said. “There are any number of dolls between here and Bryant Park who would be honored to show up at the Havana on the arm of Sky Masterson.”

“Not any doll, though?” he said.

This was where I should have recognized my danger, but he had succeeded in provoking me. “Any doll of flesh and blood,” I said. “You name her, and I will bring her to the Havana tonight.”

“Any doll. And I name her,” Nathan said. “Will you bet on that?”

That should have been my cue to think better of it, but he had made me angry now. “Certainly I will bet on that.”

I knew from the grin that spread across his face that I had made a mistake. “I name _her_ ,” he said, pointing to the end of the block, where a doll had just stepped up to the portable podium of the Mechanization Army, the chrome on her head and shoulder gleaming in the sun.

I groaned. Walking down West Forty-First Street at 6 p.m. had been an error of the gravest kind.

The Mechanization Army demonstration was in full swing by the time I got there. Normally I would have made an effort to avoid such spectacles, but in this case I wished to know what I was dealing with.

The doll on the podium was young, no older than I, and quite the tomato, with the kind of shining hair and curving figure one would normally admire. But that figure was shiny with metal, and she spoke into a microphone while the ranks of the Mechanization Army stood stonily behind her.

“People of New York,” she said, in a voice that was loud and yet strangely without expression. “Do you fear the full import of what the cybernauts have brought us? You should welcome them with open arms. They have taken pity on us poor mortals and allowed us to share in their own glittering immortality. Do you remember before you had your implants, when fear and anxiety were allowed to prey on your mind? Just as you are now free of those things, soon you will be free of all weaknesses of the human mind and body, if you accept their generous offer. Turn away from the cesspits of sin that still lurk in the low places of the city and reach toward freedom. I myself have begun the final transformation, and soon I will be free forever from weakness and death. I urge you to follow me into this new world of glowing, mechanized life!”

Her words rang over the street as the rows of commuters continued without pause on their way home from the factories of the cybernauts. The crystals on their heads glinted a dull rainbow in the evening sun.

Her words did not inspire in me any great desire to approach her. However, I do not welch on a bet. I waited until the series of speeches was over, and as the Army packed up its equipment to move out, I moved in.

“So,” I said to the doll, who was currently packing up the podium. “That was one fine speech you gave.”

She turned around, an unmistakable expression of hope in her eye despite the dulling effect of the implant in her head. The hope died upon seeing me. I tend to have that effect on the cybernautically inclined; I believe it’s something about the cut of my suit.

“I’m glad you appreciated it,” she said.

“But not too glad, right?” I said. “Because of the implant you have in your brain that prevents such things.”

Her face stayed admirably still. “It is always a blessing when a sinner listens to our message.”

“Shame more of them didn’t,” I said, gesturing toward the street corner. “Seemed like you weren’t having much success with the commuters, there.”

Now her lips did press together very slightly. “The task of spreading good news brings with it many challenges.”

I had had more interesting conversations with piles of rubble. “So maybe you need to take a different approach,” I said. “These commuters can’t be your most urgent targets. Wouldn’t you like to reach the real sinners?”

She regarded me steadily. “What do you mean?”

“Well.” I ran a thumb along my lapel. “As you are no doubt aware, this city does have its underbelly. There are some joints to which a properly mechanized doll like yourself would not have access to on her own. But in the company of a regular patron…”

Now I could tell she was interested. She darted a look over her shoulder at her senior officer, another partially mechanized woman, before looking back at me. “Are you offering to turn informant?” she asked in a low voice.

“Not at all.” I flashed her a smile. “I’m asking you for a date.”

She was surprised enough that one of her eyebrows rose a fraction. “A date?”

“You are a very attractive doll,” I said, layering on the charm which I knew would be mostly ineffective on her. “And I wish to make a good impression tonight at the Havana.”

“I can’t believe you would have the nerve to—did you say the Havana?”

“That’s right.” She was hooked now—I saw her eyes flick back over to her senior officer, but they returned unerringly to me. “I have an appointment with its blackjack tables at nine.”

“I could get a group of reinforcements,” she said, “have them meet us—”

“No dice,” I said. “This offer is for you only. Come with me or don’t—but if you try to bring the contents of your silverware drawer here, it’s all off.”

She was silent for a long moment. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because,” I said, turning up the wattage on my smile, “like I said, you are a very attractive doll.”

She did not blush, but I like to think she would have if it had not been for the implant.

Her name, she told me reluctantly, was Sarah Brown. We made arrangements to meet on a certain street corner in an hour. “What makes you think I won’t show up with a brigade and arrest you on the corner?” she asked me.

I winked. “I have confidence you will not wish to ruin our date.”

I did have confidence she would not wish to ruin our date, but only because said date involved her gaining access to the Havana. Just in case, I arrived five minutes late after some surveillance of my own.

Her implant was not adequate to keep her from looking uncomfortable as she waited for me. “Aren’t you a picture,” I said when I finally came out to meet her.

She was wearing a high-necked gray dress that would not have looked good on many dolls but did look good on her. “A woman’s beauty is insignificant,” she said.

“Are you implying that you do not find me pleasing to the eye?” I asked.

She looked at me then—quickly, but I saw the way her eyes traveled the length of my body. I grinned, because I knew that even if she did not find me pleasing, many others did. Plus, I was wearing my plum suit with the gray stripes. It was a happy coincidence that it matched the gray of her dress.

“It’s unimportant,” she said, which I knew to be anything but the truth in this world of ours.

“In that case,” I said, holding out my arm, “shall we?”

She displayed some reluctance to hold my arm on the public street. It was true that it was a daring display, physical contact not being encouraged among the cybernauts. Those of us who still enjoyed it tended to do so in private. But the hour was late enough and the street in such a neighborhood that I did not think anyone would give us trouble, and I was correct.

I stopped several blocks away from the Havana’s current location and asked her to put on a blindfold. “And a cap for your locator, too,” I said, handing her the tiny shielded cup.

She looked at it dubiously before snapping it into place over her locator crystal. The crystal was of an amethyst color that looked very nice with the brown of her hair, and it was almost a shame to cover it. “What’s to stop me from looking up the trace on your locator when I get home?” she asked.

“You are welcome to make the attempt,” I said. My locator crystal was genuine, unlike Nathan’s, but a machine trying to read it would discover that I was an eighty-seven-year-old retired chimney sweep who hadn’t moved from the South Bronx in twenty-three years.

“But if I don’t know where the club is…” she said.

I could see her intention wavering. “You are clearly an intelligent doll,” I said. “Which would be of more benefit to you: to raid the Havana, so that those who currently frequent it will be forced to spend their evenings at other locations you do not yet know about, or to spend time at the Havana and use that time to convert as many as possible to your point of view?”

She looked torn. No doubt her distaste for the activities that take place at establishments like the Havana was clouding her judgment. However, she put the blindfold on and put her hand back on my arm.

She had to hold my arm much more tightly now that she could not see her own way. I am not ashamed to say I enjoyed it.

The door to the Havana was currently hidden in the back of a hardware store that did not appear open. I presented the bouncer with the chit I had received from Harry the Horse earlier that day, and the bouncer opened the door with his big metal hands.

The noise of the place hit us as soon as the door was open. Music was one of the first things the cybernauts eradicated from New York, so the five-piece band may have been overwhelming even before I removed Sarah’s blindfold. When I did, though, she had a view of a crowd dancing enthusiastically in some cases to make _me_ blush.

“They—they have metal on their bodies,” Sarah said after a minute, the shock evidently having broken through the effect of her chip. “They have implants in their heads. How can they—”

At the edge of the crowd I saw a face I knew coming toward me: Nicely Nicely Johnson. Though he lives up to his name, I did not want to see him tonight. “Come this way,” I said, taking Sarah’s arm. “There are refreshments in the next room.”

The next room featured a makeshift bar three-deep with thirsty swells. The tables were full as well, but one conveniently opened as soon as I tipped my hat to the gentleman seated there. He was not exactly a friend, but we had played each other at poker the week before, and I was still awaiting payment on a voucher he had made me. He evidently did not intend to provide it tonight.

I left Sarah at the table and fought my way up to the bar. Benny was working tonight and noticed me instantly. “Sky!” she said. “The usual?”

“Better make it two,” I said, jerking my thumb back toward the table. “And give me the second with a few drops of engine oil.”

Her eyes widened, and she went up on her tiptoes to see over the hats of the thirsty crowd. “That is the tin soldier who has recently been going around with the Mechanization Army, or I will eat my own apron,” she said. “What are you doing with a rusty hinge like her?”

“Winning a bet and having a date,” I said, grinning. “Now, can I have my drinks or not?”

“Your drink, sure,” she said. “But I refuse to pollute good Scotch like that. Your doll can have the engine oil with seltzer like the rest of the mech heads and like it.”

“No skin off my nose,” I said, and she gave me two drinks to carry back to the table.

Sarah was still there, tapping her foot impatiently. “I thought you were not supposed to be bothered by things like impatience and anxiety,” I said to her.

She stopped tapping her foot immediately and looked vaguely sheepish at being caught out. “The implant doesn’t work perfectly,” she said.

“Then you might as well make it stop working entirely,” I said to her, and pushed her cocktail across the table.

Her eyes widened as she looked at the drink. “What do you mean? Is this—”

“Havana’s finest,” I said, and lifted my glass to toast her.

She looked around, as if someone might pounce down and arrest us. “But I thought—”

“You thought you would visit the Havana without a little engine oil to grease the wheels?” I asked.

“I thought it was just a rumor,” she said.

I laughed. “How would perfectly respectable citizens like those who frequent this establishment be able to defy their implants without some assistance?”

She looked uncertain for a moment. I remembered Benny’s comment and wondered how long she had been in her line of work. It could not have been very long. “Well,” she said, “I’m not drinking it.”

It was no term of our bet that she drink the engine oil. However, it was a term of the bet that Nathan should show up and see us with his own eyes, and I had caught no glimpse of him so far. “Ah,” I said, leaning back. “My mistake. I thought you wanted a real chance of converting those who frequent the Havana.”

She looked at me sharply. “What?”

“You must be aware that you cannot lecture those who are doing a thing you have never tried,” I said. “They will only laugh at you. If you truly wish to have a chance at converting them, you have to understand what it is that tempts them.” I gestured to the glass.

She looked at it, then back at me. “The effects are…temporary.”

I nodded. “They are.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “You don’t have some nefarious plan to tie me up and have your way with me?”

“My dear woman,” I said, honestly offended. “That you could even conceive of Sky Masterson needing to coerce a date into her bed shows how little you understand my character and reputation.”

She stared at the glass for another moment. Then, with a gesture the swiftness of which I could admire, she tipped it back and drained the whole thing in two swallows.

She wore a look of surprise as she put the glass back on the table. “That was delicious,” she said.

I doubted it. There was a reason it was called engine oil, and the smell played no small part in that. But I had been told that it had an instantaneously pleasurable effect on those who bore an implant, which counteracted any unpleasantness of taste. “I am glad to hear it,” I said, and raised and drained my Scotch in imitation.

Sarah appeared very tense as she settled her glass onto the table. I understood the feeling: it was no doubt unnerving to await the operation of an effect you were dreading. “Would you care to dance?” I asked.

Her eyes widened slightly. “Not like—”

“There are many ways to dance.” I stood up and held my hand out to her.

She took it after another quick glance from side to side. Her body was rigid as we made our way over to the dance floor, and I noticed that she was biting her lip.

The center of the dance floor was still full of couples dancing more closely than I imagined Sarah would be comfortable with, so soon after the application of the engine oil. Fortunately, there was an area beyond the crowd where couples were engaging in the showier and less intimate styles of dance, in which I am well-versed.

Sarah settled into my hold tentatively and followed my footsteps, looking at her feet more than was advisable but otherwise doing fine. “You take to it well,” I said.

She let out a small burst of laughter, perhaps a sign that the engine oil was taking its effect. “What is the _point_ of this?” she asked.

“The point?” I adjusted my hold on her back, which was point enough in my book. “Rhythm. Connection. Chemistry.”

She looked at me sharply. “Chemistry?”

I spun her out, taking her by surprise, and then pulled her back into my arms. “Yeah. Chemistry.”

Her cheeks were slightly pink. “It’s not worth it.”

“Chemistry?”

“All of this.” She nodded her head to her room. “Drink, dancing, pleasure. None of it lasts.”

“All the more reason to take it as it comes,” I said.

“But don’t you want more?” she asked. “Don’t you want—”

“Miss Sarah Brown,” I said, pulling her into a sweetheart hold. “Are you trying to reform me?”

Her pink cheek was very near my own. I could feel from the ease of her body that the engine oil was having its effect. I could almost have been holding a full human doll, if it had not been for the cool of the metal through the shoulder of her dress. “You knew why I came with you tonight.”

“But I also recall telling you that you had to taste a thing before you could properly rail against it,” I said. “I would like to show you what it is to dance. Will you let me?”

My lips brushed her ear as I spoke, and her shiver traveled down my arms. “All right,” she said.

The band slid into a faster song, and I showed her what it was to dance: moving with music that was almost too quick, pulling her into move after move until she stopped trying to figure out the steps and simply responded. I spun her out and pulled her against my side, leaning to take her weight, and when I pulled her back into my arms she was breathless and laughing, already doing the steps again. “This is—”

“Exactly,” I said, and swung both of our arms over our heads.

I spun her out and into a tight hold as the band played the final chords of the song, and then I dipped her so that she was looking at the dance floor upside-down. She clung to me as she came up again, both of us catching our breath. “That was…” she said.

“That,” I said, “was chemistry.”

She raised startled eyes to mine. I noticed, suddenly, how truly lovely they were, and how close we were standing. She was settled into the curve of my arm, warm against me, and our eyes were locked on each other.

She tore hers away a moment later. “I should,” she said, pulling back a little. The rigidity returned to her back. “Is there a restroom?”

“Surely.” I led her there, a hand in the small of her back. She did not pull away, but nor did she push into it. She disappeared into the restroom without meeting my gaze, and I leaned against the rough plastered wall and loosened the collar of my shirt.

I did not have long to wait and contemplate the effects of my choices before a familiar face showed up in the restroom alcove. “Sky,” Nicely said. “How good to see you this fine evening.”

Now, Nicely is a capital fellow, and it was no discredit to him that I spent a moment looking for an escape route before responding. “Nicely. How goes it?”

“Nicely, nicely,” he said loudly, before stepping closer and lowering his voice. “Listen, Sky. We could really use you. Have you thought about what I—”

“No doubt you have seen my date,” I said loudly, gesturing toward the washroom to my right. “A certain Sarah Brown, often seen out and about with the Mechanization Army?”

His eyes widened and his voice dropped lower. “Sky. Are you doing your own infiltration?”

“Merely on a date,” I said lightly. “You know how I feel about entanglements.”

“Sure, sure, but if you have the opportunity, or—you should think about what I said, the missions we could use you on—”

It was a speech I had heard several times before, despite my doing everything in my power to avoid providing Nicely with the opportunity to make it to me. “I’m not sure my skills at the blackjack table would help you much,” I said.

“You’ve got a lot more skills than that,” he said. “C’mon, Sky, I know you’re on the side of freedom.”

“I am, and when I decide to spend that freedom on a hopeless cause, I’ll let you know,” I said, distracted by the washroom door opening. “Sarah! Ready for more dancing?”

She shot a curious glance at Nicely, who looked after me in despair as I led Sarah away. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, actually,” she said as we neared the dance floor.

She sounded so composed that I shot her a glance to see if the engine oil had worn off so quickly. There were still emotions flicking across her face—ones she had probably never learned to hide, not having felt them in so long—but I couldn’t read what they said. “Are you reconsidering the plan for the evening?” I said. “Because I would suggest—”

“Nathan!” someone shouted nearby. “Nathan, look, I found them!”

Sarah and I spun around to see a very tall person teetering toward us in an outfit that could only belong to Adelaide, featured dancer of The Hot Box. The height of her heels was surpassed only by the length of her mink stole. Nathan was hurrying behind, holding his hat.

“Sky, how very good to see you,” Nathan said, looking like it was anything but. “And…your friend.”

“Don’t mind Nathan,” Adelaide said to us. “He’s just a little sore on account of we were supposed to elope today and he forgot.”

“Yes, it was a terrible tragedy,” Nathan said glumly, still looking at Sarah.

I felt Sarah’s jolt of surprise where I was holding her arm. “Elope?” she said, while having her hand pumped by Adelaide.

“Well, yeah, obviously it’s not an easy thing, but Nathan _told_ me he had everything arranged with the exit visas, and after the last thirteen times we tried—”

“Sweetheart,” Nathan said in a sing-song out the side of his mouth, “you might not want to go on about that here.”

“What?” Adelaide looked around. “Nathan, it’s only the Havana! No one here’s going to report us!” She scrunched her nose at us. “Sorry about him. He’s so paranoid. It was very nice to meet you,” she added to Sarah.

“Charming as always,” I said, quickly steering Sarah away before she could say—

“Elope!” she repeated as I hurried her into the next room. “They can’t possibly think they’re going to get out of Manhattan.”

“They might,” I said. “Can’t say I would ever try it, but others have.”

“Hardly any,” she said.

I looked but failed to find any signs of duplicity in her face. “Is that what they teach you in the Mechanization Army?”

“They teach us about the Resistance and its failures,” she said.

It was the argument I had just been making to Nicely, and yet I did not like it coming out of her mouth. “They might not want to tell junior sergeants about the times they succeed,” I said.

She straightened indignantly. “I’m going to be promoted next week.”

We were passing through the gambling rooms, and several associates of mine raised their arms to invite me to their tables. I only grimaced at them. I was annoyed, suddenly, with everything, and everyone, especially Sarah. “How lucky for you. Now you’ll be able to stop those like Nathan and Adelaide who are trying to build a new life, instead of simply hearing about it.”

“They should be stopped,” Sarah said. “If they stay here, they’ll have a chance of something better.”

“A chance of serving robots, you mean.”

“At least it’s better than serving nothing and no one,” she snapped back.

“Is that directed at me?” I asked, and she raised a challenging brow. “What makes you think that?”

“Please,” she said with a snort. “Everything about you makes me think that. The clothes, the drinks, the talk of chemistry, the gambling buddies…”

“There is nothing wrong with living a life of pleasure,” I said.

“There’s everything wrong with it,” she said. “I thought at first this was some kind of Resistance trap, but it isn’t, is it? This is just who you are.”

Her tone was scorn perfected. “You would rather I fought against your precious cybernauts,” I said.

“No, I would rather you fought for them,” she said. “Tried to give some meaning and substance to the lives of these people.”

“There’s more meaning and substance in one evening here than in a thousand years as a cybernaut droid,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes. “So why aren’t you trying to escape them? Why don’t you have someone like Adelaide you’re running away with?”

“Who says I don’t?” I asked.

“Do you?” she asked, and I had to look away. “See, that’s what I’m saying. You talk about chemistry and connection, and it’s all a case for—nothing. For having fun with your cheap pleasures and not thinking about anything bigger. You talk about meaning and substance, but underneath it all you see the same thing we do: that all human connection is a lie.”

“Did the cybernauts teach you that?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “And they offered me something better, which you’re too much of a coward to take."

I laughed at her. “There is nothing better in what the cybernauts offer you. You think they care about the humans who serve them? If they truly wanted the higher road for all humans, why would places like this survive?”

“Because people like you perpetuate them!” she said.

“No,” I said. “Because the cybernauts do not care to expend their power to expunge them. They leave that to the tin soldiers of the Mechanization Army, the ones making a feeble attempt at the work the cybernauts could accomplish in a matter of days if they chose to. But they do not care what the rest of us get up to as long as they have sufficient workers for their factories.”

She was quivering with rage the likes of which she must not have felt in years, with that implant in her head. “They’re letting me become one of them.”

“I am certain that serves them in some way, too.”

“You know nothing about them,” she hissed. “You’ll die someday, still thinking you’re right, and I’ll live so long I forget you existed.”

“A cold, empty life in which you have nothing and nobody,” I said. “You feel it now, don’t you? The way your life starves you of feeling. You are fighting it, but you want my hands on you, because there has been nobody to touch you in so long. There has been no person to—”

She cut me off with a growl and her mouth on mine.

She kissed from a place of ferocity, and I was only too happy to meet her there. The sights and sounds of the gambling rooms of the Havana faded away as we leaned against an empty blackjack table and practiced the fine art of necking. It was quickly apparent that the act was a new one for her, but she responded swiftly to instruction.

I was unsure how much time had passed before we separated. She pulled back, panting and dazed. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she said.

The kissing had brought out the pink in her cheeks and lips, and several strands of her hair had escaped from her updo. “I can’t agree,” I said.

She averted her gaze. “I should probably go home.”

“Allow me to escort you.”

The nighttime air was cool when we left the Havana. Sarah shivered, and I removed my jacket to give to her. She shrugged it over her shoulders and wrapped her arms around her chest.

“I’m not just doing this because I’m being told to,” she said.

“What?” I asked. “Leaving the Havana?”

She slanted me an amused look. A few wisps of her hair were still free around her face. “No. Cybernautic conversion.”

“Ah. Why?”

“I didn’t get my implant until I was eighteen.”

I was surprised enough that I stopped walking. She looked at me, amused. “I know,” she said. “It’s not what you’d think.”

“I confess it was not,” I said. “Your family was resistant?”

She nodded. “I ran away when I was eighteen. To the Mechanization Army, like I’d wanted since my father left us for his own cybernautic conversion.”

I stiffened. That had happened to a friend of my mother’s when I was small: her husband had left, apparently to join the cybernauts, and it had turned out that he had in fact been arrested and forcibly implanted. “Are you sure it was voluntary?”

“Yes,” she said. “He talked to us about it beforehand. He wanted to take me with him.”

“And your mother stopped him?”

“We went into hiding,” she said. “I was eight. I lost everyone I’d known, my friends, my father, and even my mother—she wasn’t the same after that. I watched her be destroyed by the loss of my father, and I wished he had taken me, too. It was all I wanted, for years.” She laughed, a little huff of breath. “It’s been so long since I’ve remembered wanting that. It’s just been something I’ve had for the past decade.”

“And you’re glad of it?”

“I’m not glad,” she said. “I’m not anything.”

“Nothing to lose,” I said.

She gave me a swift glance. “That’s the point.”

“Do you regret coming with me tonight?” I asked.

“I didn’t make a great stand for the Army, did I?” Then, a moment later, “No. I don’t regret it. Come tomorrow, I won’t have to worry about regretting it.”

“That would be the worst part for me,” I said. “Losing even the clear memory of how I felt on a night like this one.”

“Even a night like this one?” she asked.

I looked back at her without responding. She colored slightly, barely visible in the darkness of the street. Then, surprising me, she took my hand in hers.

It was perhaps not such a surprise. She would regret nothing coming the morning. What did she have to worry about?

“What about you?” she asked. “Why don’t you want to leave like Nathan and Adelaide do, if you’re so against the cybernauts?”

“It’s Manhattan,” I said. “The greatest city on earth. Why would I leave?”

“You have to sneak around and risk arrest every day.”

I threw her a smirk. “That,” I said, “is part of the fun.”

She looked at me skeptically.

“Plus,” I said a moment later, “I do not have someone like Adelaide has Nathan. I have never wanted anything like that.”

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “I have always preferred to be unattached.”

When I looked over, she was regarding me. “So,” she said, “tell me more about what’s so great about your life on the wrong side of the law in Manhattan.”

She was letting me off easy. I slanted her a grin. “Well, I am the best blackjack player south of Harlem.”

She laughed. “And?”

“That’s not good enough?”

“Not to trade eternity for,” she said.

“Your eternity does not hold anything that would interest me,” I said.

“I’m just saying,” she said. “If you’re going to let yourself die for something—at least do it for a better cause.”

“What cause do you suggest?”

“You could always join the Mechanization Army,” she said.

I turned toward her. Her face was half in shadow, half faintly outlined in the dim glow of the streetlight. It lit the softness of her temple and cheekbone with gold. “If I were to join the Mechanization Army,” I said, “I would be joining for one thing, and they would never let me keep it.”

She held my gaze and did not pretend to misunderstand. “If you joined, you wouldn’t want to keep it.”

“And that would be the worst outcome of all,” I said.

A frown creased her brow. “But if you really want—me, if you want this—it would hurt you, not to have it. Right? Wouldn’t you rather not feel that?”

“Not for all the credits in the world,” I said. “Not for all the—” I took a step closer and raised my hand to touch the glow of the light on her cheekbone. “This feeling—any feeling, even pain, even hunger, loneliness—I would suffer them endlessly before I would relinquish them. Because feeling them, that’s what life is for. That’s what we live and sweat and bleed and die for. Otherwise we’re just empty metal, and there’s no point in that.”

She looked up at me, eyes wide like she was wounded.

“But this feeling,” I said in a low voice. “What I feel right now, when I look at you—this is what I would surrender last. They could dip me in metal, and this is what I would feel as I went under.”

Her eyelids swept down and back up, gaze not leaving mine. Then she leaned in and kissed me.

It was a long, slow kiss, and in it I tasted the words she had spoken tonight: her conviction and the pain that had fed it, the iron she had put in her own spine. The way she trembled despite all that. I tasted that, and when our mouths finally separated I lay my forehead against hers and breathed.

She pulled away first. Her face was still hard to make out in the low light, but I could see enough that it was not a surprise when she stepped away.

When I spoke next, it felt like an ill-advised throw at a craps table: the one that takes a winning streak one too far. “Will I see you again?”

She smiled at me, sadly, in the light of the street lamp. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m a tin soldier, remember?”

Then she turned and walked away, the hard heels of her shoes tapping against the pavement with a metallic click.

I stood for a long time after she was gone. Then I turned and went back to the Havana Club. I had it on good authority that I had something to sweat and bleed and die for.

II.

The next time I saw Sarah, it was a month later, and I was being interrogated by two cybernaut enforcers.

“There you are!” Sarah said, storming out of the Mechanization Army Broadway headquarters, directly behind me. “I demand to know what you did to me.”

The enforcers twitched and tightened their grips on my arms. “As I was explaining to you gentlemen,” I continued, “I would never dream of interfering in the work of the Mechanization Army. I was unaware that this building was at all associated with them, truly.”

They were immune to my charms. Mechs always are. Of course, their skepticism may have been augmented by their having apprehended me halfway up the building’s facade.

“Don’t think you’re going to get away with—” Sarah stopped in front of us as, no doubt, she took in the details of the situation. “My apologies, officers,” she said, falling into parade rest.

One of the mechs rotated its featureless face in her direction. “Are we to understand that this woman falls under your jurisdiction?”

There were blotches of red high on Sarah’s cheeks. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, this is a Mechanization Army matter.”

The mechs’ hands unclamped from around my arms. “Thanks, lads, it was swell,” I said, and then Sarah’s hand took their place and pulled me at breakneck pace around the corner of the building.

“I appreciate the rescue,” I said as she pulled me along, “but I assure you, it was entirely unnec—”

“I don’t care what idiocies you get up to with the law,” she said between her teeth. “I care about whatever it was you did to my implant.”

She yanked me to a stop by a tiny service entrance to the Army headquarters and dropped her hand from my arm. I had not seen her in a month; I had not, of course, wanted to see her, though I may have spent more time walking by Mechanization Headquarters than was strictly usual for me. “Your implant?” I repeated.

“It’s—” She looked from side to side and lowered her voice. “It’s _stopped working_.”

I took a good look at her. That hectic blush was still high on her cheeks. Her eyes looked wild in a way they hadn’t even after drinking the engine oil. “Stopped working?”

“I’ve been feeling—” She broke off. “Things. I’ve been feeling things.”

“Things like…”

Her eyes dropped, very distinctly, to my mouth. “It doesn’t matter.”

The words hummed between us for a moment. “You did tell me yourself that the implant was imperfect,” I said carefully.

“It’s supposed to let little glimpses of feeling through sometimes,” she said. “Not like…” She cut off and ran a hand over her hair. “You did something. What did you do?”

“I did what I told you I did,” I said. “A few drops of engine oil. Exactly what all the other metal heads took in their drinks. The effects shouldn’t have lasted longer than a night.”

She turned away and put a hand to her mouth. “But then…” she said. “Why do I feel so…”

“Perhaps you have never challenged the implant with a strong enough emotion before,” I suggested.

She stayed as she was, hand pressed over her mouth. I reached out a hand, and she turned toward me and buried her face in my shoulder and let me wrap her up in my arms.

We stayed like that for a long while. “What will you do?” I asked, my mouth pressed against her hair, after her trembling had stopped.

She huffed a laugh. “What I was always planning to do,” she said. “I’ll be converted fully within a few months. I can endure for that long.” She pulled back, her lips curving into a sad smile. “I’ll take a lesson from your book. No attachments.”

I did not correct her. Instead I said, “That is not the only choice available to you.”

“No?” Her hands were still on my waist, and she looked up at me with what might have been hope.

I touched a piece of hair that had escaped from her updo. “You remember Nathan and Adelaide. You could have that.”

She snorted, the glorious defiance coming into her face again. “I could never elope. The implant—”

“The implant can be removed,” I said. “There are doctors who can do that. You could have what your parents had.”

She looked at me for a moment longer. Then she took her hands from my waist and stepped away. “Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “That’s a fairy tale.”

“Do you believe so much in what the cybernauts offer you?” I asked. “It’s a cold, dead life, Sarah.”

“It’s peace,” she said. “Real peace, the only kind that exists.”

Frustration made me tighten my hands into fists. “And do you want peace so badly? Or are you just too much of a coward for anything else?”

She opened her mouth to respond. Before she could, the small service door burst open and Nicely Nicely flew out, waving a handful of metal. “Sky! Your diversion worked, I got ’em. One for Nathan and one for—”

He stopped, and the three of us stared: Nicely and me at Sarah, and Sarah at the visas in Nicely’s hand.

The facts of the situation were like this. We had the visas. Sarah knew that we had the visas, and, now that she knew to check, would easily be able to identify their serial numbers as those missing from the Army stores. She also knew what Nathan and Adelaide looked like and would be able to identify them to to the cybernaut patrols at the border. Any other attempts to smuggle Nathan out of the city which might have avoided said border patrols would have to wait at least a month for the return of Nicely’s contact in the shipping industry.

“And I ain’t got a month,” Nathan moaned. His eyes were darting constantly around the crumbling Resistance safehouse on the East River, like he expected the cybernaut enforcers to burst in and blacken his left eye to match the right. “You don’t know these cybernaut creditors. Sky, Nicely, you gotta help me.”

“We could keep him in hiding for a month,” Nicely said uncertainly. “It’ll be tricky, can’t let him out on the streets, but—”

“I’ll never make it,” Nathan said. “They’ll track me down and throw me to their cyberdogs.”

“Perhaps the next time you need to bankroll your craps game,” I said, “you will think twice before you go in debt to a cybernaut bureaucrat.”

He pointed a finger at me. “If _you_ had lent me the ten thousand when I asked—”

Adelaide nudged him in the side with a pointed toe. “Stop squawking, both of you! Sky and Nicely will figure out a solution.” She looked at me hopefully. “Won’t you, Sky?”

“Our situation has not materially changed,” I said slowly. “We knew your creditors would be watching the border regardless.”

“Yeah, but now they know we’re using stolen exit visas,” Nathan said.

“A fact they might have guessed on their own,” I said.

“If Sarah tells ’em, they’ll know which ones, though,” Nicely said. “You’ll never get out with those ones, and we’ll never get back in the building with her watching us.”

“Will she tell them, Sky?” Adelaide asked.

I considered. She had given no indication of what she would do before she fled the scene beside the building. On the other hand, she had given plenty of indication as to her views on life inside and outside of cybernautic control.

“I think we must assume she will,” I said. “However—”

“This is all your fault!” Adelaide said, rounding on Nathan again. “If _you_ hadn’t gone around talking about eloping in front of her—”

“Me?” he said, outraged. “That was you! And what about—”

“My friends,” I said, loudly enough to cut through their squabbling. “I have a plan.”

Adelaide and Nathan donned their disguises in the rusting car we were able to borrow from associates in the Resistance. I was beginning to realize that I had glimpsed only the edge of Nicely’s vast and sprawling network. The cosmetics that would fool the facial scan came from a cell of workers in a plastics factory; the clothing, from a family that owned half of the human-operated Village.

Adelaide batted away Nathan’s attempts to help her dress. “Don’t be silly, I know how to pretend to be a guy,” she said. “I did it for the first sixteen years of my life, didn’t I?”

“I just don’t see why I have to play your assistant,” Nathan grumbled.

“Because you’re so much shorter, that’s why,” she said, brushing the fake stubble over her already strong jaw.

When they were fully dressed, the transformation was impressive, even when the two of them were crowded into the back of a jalopy. “Better cancel my three o’clock,” Adelaide said in a deep voice, then ruined the illusion by giggling.

We had reached the departure dock. “Wait here for my return,” I said, and slipped out of the car into the night.

It was child’s play to lift the exit visas from a sleepy couple waiting in line at the dock. Normally Sky Masterson does not stoop to common thievery—but that was not always true, when I was a little girl hanging around the edges of gambling halls that would not yet admit me. My fingers remembered my skill as I brushed against the pair of men and made pretty apologies to go with the stolen Army visas I dropped in place of their own.

“It’s done,” I said, back at the car. I handed Nathan and Adelaide their visas.

Adelaide threw her arms around my neck and sobbed her goodbye until I feared her stubble would run. Nathan stood uncomfortably and said, “Sky, sorry about that business with the bet I pushed on you last month. You’re a solid dame.”

“The pleasure has been mine,” I said, and ushered them into line.

Nicely and I found a spot in the shadows to watch from. Adelaide and Nathan did an admirable of imitating a businessman and his assistant, though Adelaide had a tendency to swing her hips too much as she walked.

I confess I was holding my breath as the pair of men with the stolen Mechanization Army visas got to the front of the line. The visas went under the scanning light, and the light flashed red as a low beeping began. I let my breath out in a rush.

Nicely cut a glance my way. “Seems like our bird decided to sing.”

“Only to be expected,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed ahead. She had, after all, never lied about what she was. It was to my own account if I felt any disappointment.

“Hold, please,” the droid guarding the gate said. “Visas are reported as stolen.”

“What?” one of the men said, drawing himself up taller.

“Step aside for scanning,” the droid said, and the pair was hustled out of line, vaguely protesting.

It was going about as well as we could have expected. Just then a car pulled up to the dock, stopping so quickly the wheels screeched.

I had a bad feeling about this.

A light flooded the dock, and a tall woman stepped out of a car, followed by a line of droids. She had the distinctive shape of a human who has been converted fully: metal making a rigid imitation of the human form.

“Holy scrap,” Nicely breathed next to me. He evidently recognized her as well: the general of the Mechanization Army.

“Stop,” she called across the dock. Her voice rung through the air in the way only a mechanical voice can. She strode toward the couple being escorted away by the drones, walking unhurriedly, but no one moved during the whole time of her approach. She reached the couple and took their chins in her hand, in turn, and examined their faces. “These are not the thieves,” she announced. “My contact has given a full description.”

Nicely shifted uncomfortably next to me. If Sarah had given a physical description, our chances had just narrowed considerably.

“These two bore the stolen visas,” the droid said.

“Then the thieves are somewhere nearby,” the general said, sweeping her eyes down the line. “Please hold the line while I investigate.”

Before she could move, the door of the car opened again, and someone else got out.

Not a person at all, this time. It had no feet to set on the ground; it hovered several inches off the dock, lights glowing underneath its chassis and lasers scanning the dock from its dome. A cybernaut of the first echelon.

I could feel everyone on the dock, even the innocent passengers, draw back instinctively as the cybernaut came forward. “Have you recovered the credits,” it said, its voice without inflection.

“I am undergoing an investigation, your mechanism,” the general said. “I will examine each of the potential passengers—”

The cybernaut turned, its lasers passing over the crowd. “There,” it said, its lasers resting on Nathan.

“Shit!” Nathan screamed, and he turned and ran.

Nicely and I sped after them. It was unclear how we would be able to help, but we were certainly not about to let them flee alone. Nathan and Adelaide had abandoned their luggage and were racing across the deserted shipping yard, and we caught up just as they skidded to a stop in front of the waiting squadron of cybernaut enforcers.

“This way!” Nathan shouted, pulling us to the right, which would have been a good move, if it had not taken us out onto a long dock with no other exits.

“Not this way!” Adelaide yelled, and we all tried to turn around, but the enforcers were waiting in a line at the end of the dock. Surmising, no doubt correctly, that we’d have nowhere to go but back to land.

“We will have to swim for it,” Nicely said.

“I can’t swim,” Nathan said. “Who can swim? We grew up in Manhattan!”

“They would catch us at the shore in any case,” I said. I was starting to think there was no way off this dock without being apprehended.

The enforcers were starting to make their way down the dock—slowly, as they had no reason to think we could escape. We crowded back toward the end of the dock, saying our prayers, and a voice behind us said, “Psst!”

We looked down. There, rocking on the choppy water beneath the dock in a tiny motorboat, was Sarah Brown.

“Get in!” she whispered, waving her hands. “What are you, morons?”

We were morons, but we climbed into the boat regardless.

“Quick, get down. I’ll start the engine,” she said, stowing the oars.

“Didn’t you turn us in?” Nathan asked.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, flipping switches on the motor. “They noticed right away those visas were missing, and of course they guessed who it was. Did you honestly borrow ten thousand credits from the personal bank of the high cybernaut commander?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Nathan said weakly.

So that cybernaut back on the main dock was—“Please tell us you can get this boat moving,” I said.

“Of course,” she said, and the motor growled to life. We shot away from the dock.

A commotion arose behind us, followed quickly by the sound of enforcers taking off into the air.

“Duck!” Nicely shouted, bending down and covering his head as we heard the crackling sound of the cybernaut defensive beams warming up. “We can hug the shore, confuse their targeting—”

“No need,” Sarah said calmly as she kept the boat heading toward open waters. “I deleted the profile of our boat from the cybernaut targeting grids. They won’t be able to see us to shoot at us.”

Around us, the defensive beams shot at the choppy waves, lighting them up for bare instants.

“Well, that’s lucky,” Nathan said.

“Finally someone with some sense,” Adelaide said.

It was the work of minutes to cross the Upper Bay until a light appeared. It was not the friendly light of shore that we were all hoping for: rather, it was a sickly light with a greenish cast that spanned the water and stretched up two dozen feet, like a wall. As we got closer, we could hear its hum and see the force field crackling between the long poles that had been sunk into the Bay.

I had heard rumors of the fence around the island, but I had never seen it for myself. “Well?” I asked Nicely. “What is our operating procedure at this point?”

“How the hell should I know?” he asked. In the light of the force field, his face was looking distinctly crazed. “There’s a reason we don’t smuggle people out by motorboat!”

“There’s no need to panic,” Sarah said. “There’s a button on the inside that will deactivate each section of the force field.” She pointed up the metal pole nearest us, at a round gray spot near the top.

“Well, that’s great,” Nicely said. “How are we supposed to push it if we aren’t flying robots?”

“If we had a gun, or some other kind of projectile—” Sarah started to say.

Nicely spread his hands. “You must be mistaking us for some much better-funded resistance movement.”

“Hang on,” Nathan said. “You mean to say you numbskulls don’t have a way to get through?”

Adelaide smacked him on the arm. “They’ve gotten us this far. Show some appreciation.”

“We’d better do something quick,” Nicely said. Beams were still striking the water, though none too close to us. “The cybernauts aren’t going to be fooled forever.”

There was only one thing for it. “Please keep the boat as steady as you can,” I said as I peeled off my jacket.

Sarah stopped me with her hand on my arm. “You can’t leave the boat. The defense grid will pick you up.”

“But the force field won’t electrocute me, will it?” I asked.

“No, but—”

“Then I’ll have to try to get to the button before they make it to me.” Her hand was still on my arm, and I covered it with my own. “If I’m going to let myself die, it had better be for a good cause, right?”

Her eyes were luminous in the force field’s glow. She opened her mouth—but, as I knew she would, she did not object. “Be careful,” she said, and she let me go.

Just as I stood up to dive, there was a whizzing sound by my ear. I looked up to see a stiletto pump fly over our heads and land, heel-first, on the button.

“You girls, making things so complicated,” Adelaide said, shaking her head and tucking her other shoe back into her suit jacket.

There was a mighty whine of machinery powering down, and the section of force field in front of us blinked out.

“Quick, before they notice,” Nicely said, and Sarah opened the throttle to full.

“Will they follow us?” I asked as we shot through the gap.

“No,” Sarah said. “They’re not allowed to cross the line.”

I looked back to see cybernauts converging on the missing piece of fence, and it was only a minute or two before it blinked back into solidity. But we were through and free.

Everyone in the ship sagged against the hull, except Sarah at the rudder. “That was my best pair of heels,” Adelaide said mournfully.

“Baby,” Nathan said, “when we get to shore, I’ll buy you every pair of heels on that goddamn mainland.”

The moon was bright enough for us to navigate to shore. We made landfall on a rocky coastline where someone had obligingly left a dock. “I don’t know where we are, exactly,” Sarah said, tying the boat to the dock. “But we’re outside of cybernaut territory. We can wait here till dawn, then figure out where we’re going.”

We all stumbled out of the boat, legs cramped from crouching against the sides. “What about you?” Nicely asked her. “I have some contacts in shipping—I could smuggle you back in—”

She smiled grimly in the moonlight. “I stole a Mechanization Army boat and freed four unchipped humans. I don’t think they’ll welcome me back.”

“Did they know it was you, though?” Nicely asked. “We could make up a cover story for you. Alter the coding of your locator crystal, make it seem like—”

“Actually,” she said, her eyes falling on mine. “I was thinking I might have the locator crystal taken out.”

I had been turning away to put some distance between us, but I stopped.

The smile she gave me was tremulous. “Know any doctors who might do that kind of work?”

“How badly is your chip working right now?” I asked.

“Pretty badly,” she said, and I pulled her into my arms and kissed her.

I heard Adelaide cheer, then Nathan hush her, and the muted sounds of the three of them sneaking away. Then I heard nothing but the waves on the shore and Sarah’s sighs.

We held each other for a long while after we stopped kissing, the metal on her body warming under my hands. “You mean it?” I asked her. “You want to stay?”

She pressed her face into my hair. “I decided peace was overrated.”

I smiled and held her close. “That’s good,” I said, as I watched Nathan, Adelaide, and Nicely make their way inland. “It seems highly unlikely that we will get any.”


End file.
